[Balance] Ranged Combat (Units & Cities)

[Stalker0]

Anything the makes the game harder is appreciated and if most players have to drop a difficulty level I would call that success.

To achieve this result, cities have to be so vulnerable that it is dangerous to leave room for 5ish units to attack the city..

This is a question for me, would reduce city attacks make the AI stronger or weaker?


On the one hand, the AI is terrible at combat. If battles happen more at in the field, the human is going to win them...and the city won't be able to compensate.

On the other hand, the AI has more units, and its common for a smart human to use their city to weaken down the hoards as their armies do what needs doing. If that tactic is weaker, it might strength the AI horde tactics.

Ultimately I am not sure.

 

[Stalker0]

@ More strength would make them more useful but it is unsatisfactory for the reasons mentioned above. Another solution to address the tactical disadvantage of melee units is increasing their movement.

Chumchu, I'm sorry but I didn't see the reasons you mentioned that it would be "unsatisfactory".

As for movement, we experimented with that in CEP for the vanguard line. In my opinion it made those units way too strong and it heavily changed the gameplay...not for the better imo.

I say lets just stay simple on this issue for now. Add some strength adjustments, its very easy to do, and test it out. We are already testing a brand new happiness system, I don't think we need to throw on brand new systems for everything at the onset.

 

[mystikx21]

Increasing movement is a bonus for the human player and adds to the AI cycles (they like to march their units around). If we are doing that, it should only be late game units (infantry or mech infantry+).

City combat I would think would help the AI attack other AIs, which in turn makes it more likely you might get a snowballed runaway civ to compete against as a human. If it also increases the likelihood you could lose a city, that's possible. But I'd say usually not if we're settling in chokepoints or have the army deployed near the border.

 

[Lukeroge]

I do think that cities have to be easier to take down - many times I've held off a rather large AI army with just one or two units. I still think attrittion is a nice idea, cutting down the health regen when the city is surrounded will give melee units an actual use.

As for comments about warmonger stuff, perhaps the CBP could make warmongering less.. silly :c
For example, theres the whole situation where the AI pays you to fight someone then they hate you because you puppeted the city OF THE CIV THEY ASKED YOU TO WAR WITH.